Chinese censors take notice of Twitter-style blogs
Posted by Tom Fasano on July 31, 2010 – 12:14 pm
An Internet cafe in Beijing. Chinese microblogs are exploding in popularity.
Microblogs, known as weibo accounts in Chinese, are personal sites that function a lot like Twitter by allowing users to post messages and links in fast, staccato blasts. Microblogs are offered by China’s leading Web portals and naturally have quickly risen in popularity, the number of weibo users having more than tripled to 100 million.
China’s techie crowd and web-savvy young people have embraced the new technology, and even celebrities have discovered how to use them as promotional tools. And, yes, even the government has found them an efficient way to disseminate propoganda. Like most microblogging, weibo chatter is trite and topical, but some intellectuals and activists use them to discuss topics the Chinese government considers sensitive, like human rights and basic human dignity.
But hopes of wider freedom of communication were spoiled this month when unexpectedly the authorities shut down some of the sites. Naturally Internet support personnel had their worries. Big Brother, clearly, was enforcing the shutdowns to impose tighter control and oversight, primarilly to clamp down on communication deemed challenging to state authority.
According to the LA Times article:
The government goes to great lengths to sanitize the Internet in China. It forces websites to delete objectionable material and pays Internet users to sway opinion on forums. It also maintains a vast censorship apparatus, nicknamed the Great Firewall, to filter information flowing in from abroad. Some savvy Chinese netizens have learned to jump that barrier using technology that links their Chinese computers to servers located outside the country, beyond the reach of state minders. Still, these proficients remain the minority among China’s estimated 420 million Internet users.
Meanwhile, the government is bent on tightening its grip. In the last year alone, authorities have taken aim at pornography and violent computer games. They mandated that computer manufacturers install filtering software on all new personal computers sold in China (though they later retreated when the much-criticized program proved ineffective). Then Google Inc. shut most of its China-based operations, citing increasing government censorship and cyber assaults from hackers suspected of targeting the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
Regulation, however, could prove very difficult, mainly because because of the growing number of users. “It’s very difficult to control these [microblogging] sites,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of the Beijing-based Danwei.org. “No matter how great the Great Firewall is, all it takes is one guy to post the complete works of Master Li of the Falun Gong.”
Well-known political blogger Michael Anti, said he’s definitly feeling the heat. He now accesses Twitter through a foreign server to avoid Chinese authorities. “Microblogs are going to be more and more nonpolitical,” Anti said. “It’s just going to be entertainment.”
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First post from iPod Touch
Posted by Tom Fasano on March 4, 2010 – 11:44 pmI downloaded this amazing Wordpress app that enables me to update this blog from the comfort of my couch. Not bad, especially since I’m trying to spend less time in front of the computer. I can also post pix with this app, but I’ll have to fool around with it a bit before I get the hang of it.
Tags: Blogging, Wordpress
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“Checkout” Girl Bags a Bestseller
Posted by Tom Fasano on July 28, 2009 – 9:02 am
Sam first began writing about her experiences in a blog, Cassiere No Futur.
On the Web: ‘Checkout’ Girl Cashes In With Best-Selling Memoir
Anna Sam, a cashier in France, has become a literary sensation and in the process has parlayed her experiences in the supermarket into a humorous memoir, whose English title is Checkout: A Life on the Tills.
Sam first began writing about her experiences in a blog, Cassiere No Futur, where she provided a daily account of the goings-on in the world of a cashier. The blog took off and soon attracted a large readership, followed by substantial media attention. Not long after, publishing houses were offering her book contracts.
The most salient fact about her blogging experience, from my point of view as a teacher, is not that she landed a book contract, but that she found her work ungratifying until she began to write about it. Her blogging in a sense revealed her world to herself as well as to her readers and thus validates what I’ve read in countless books on writing: You never really know anything until you write about it.
The store is packed, shoppers rush to and fro — their grocery carts squeak and rattle. A voice over the intercom barks out the latest sales promotions over a backdrop of jangling Muzak. The general brouhaha intensifies. The store is approaching its maximum sound threshold. The squalling of a brat tips it over the edge, opening the passageway to this other dimension.
Anna Sams
Listen to some French “Checkout” Girl music.
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Tags: an author, Blogging, Writing
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